Customer Service

I have been using flash drives for about five years. The first one I purchased is 512 MB and still works. It is a Lexar. My second flash is a Kingston Data Traveler, 2 GB. I’ve had it about three years. About a month back, it was about 80 percent used and decided it was “write protected”, so I can read off it, but could not write to it. Some time spent with Google searching for solutions yielded a tool to use to attempt to reformate it, but that didn’t work either. I was able to copy most everything off of it onto the computers hard drive. I then went and purchased a PNY 4 GB flash. It didn’t cost much, but the dumb thing quit working in three weeks! And I can’t read anything off it. Thank goodness, the old Kingston is still readable. I lost a few updated files off the “pony”.

So yesterday I decided to call up both PNY and Kingston to see what, if anything could be done.

PNY. Did I always properly eject it? Yes. OK, If you have the store receipt call us back and you will need to send the receipt and the flash back to us. I attempt to find the receipt, but can’t find it. I know about when I purchased it and went up to Wal*Mart, but they can’t pull up a duplicate receipt. I am out of luck on this unit.

I call up Kingston. Can you read the serial number off the side? Yes. OK, that unit is 4 years old, so it is still under our warrantee. They then email me instructions and a return number. I buy a 62 Cent padded envelop and have the post office stamp it. I’m out about $2 and Kingston will mail me a replacement drive. No questions asked. It should not have failed. Oh, and they most likely will replace the 2GB with a 4GB unit.

Kingston and Lexar, you have my business.

PNY, see ya!!!

Entertainment Tonight

We usually watch the local ABC News affiliate, WFAA. We often watch at the 6 PM news time and following that, the ABC program Entertainment Tonight (ET) comes on. It is the most annoying four minutes and thirty seconds of information that can be crammed into a thirty minute program. They start with loud flashy music and images and excitedly tell you about what they are going to cover in these thirty minutes. They then take a commercial break. When they come back, they take four minutes to dispense one minute of celebrity news. They, they tell you what else they will tell you about in the remaining part of the program. Off to another commercial break. When they come back, it is another minute buried in five minutes of noise, and then they pose some “whose celebrity something or other is TODAY…..we will tell you after THIS commercial break”. On and on and on and on. Some psychologist needs to study if suicides in America go UP as the show drones on.
They spend the last few minutes of the program telling you about what they MIGHT cover in “tomorrows program of ET!!!!!”.

So last week, Michael Jackson died of a cardiac “event”. I’ve been betting the wife that MJ would open and close the show, every day this week. I’ve won that bet. I should have bet that the entire program would be about MJ, but on Thursday, they actually had some other celebrity news, for one minute and thirteen seconds, and then returned to MJ news.

Entertainment Tonight has not been this focused on a dead celebrity, since Anna Nicole Smith passed.

Come to think of it, ANS and MJ had a lot in common. Most of it was plastic. Male viewers appreciated ET’s “coverage” of ANS……

Strange and cool events while on vacation

1) Youngest daughter took a LARGE Snickers bar out of the refridgerator and decided it was too cold to eat. So we mentioned laying on the balcony banister, in the shade, for a few minutes. Bad idea. She was 1 foot from it when a seagull swooped in and grabbed it and took it!

2) While walking off the inlet jetty wall, the gulls were again fishing for something. The night before, even the pelicans were in on it. Tonight, there were turtles bobbing up in the area! There must have been four or more. We watched until the sun faded and we could not see them anymore

3) While laying out on the sea wall after dark, I spotted FOUR satelites going throgh the sky. They look like stars, but are moving fast and no flashing lights like an airplane. Three were tracking west to east, one was south to north.

4) Spotted at least one shooting star, there might have been two more, but they were so faint, I'm wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

We B Chere

Texting "I'm SO Bored", over and over and....

This Wednesday night some bad storms rolled through North Texas. The wife and I left at 5 PM and went on our three mile walk. By the time we got back at 6, the storm clouds were filling the western sky. We called our youngest kid as she was at a friends house, to the west. She wanted us to pick them up, take them to get hamburgers, take them back home. Totally unaware of the pending storms. We got on the phone to the other mom, who agreed that getting home was the priority.
We got back a bit after 6:30 and the news was still on with the bad storms, hail, possible tornado's and such. We quickly heated some dinner and got flashlights out. By 6:45, we were shutting down computers and such. Right before 7 PM, the storm hit, the lights flashed and then went out. It stormed hard for the next thirty minutes while the warning sirens wailed. We took cover in a walk-in closet.
By 8 PM, the worst was over, but the power was out. Our youngest is very "attached" to all things electronic. She started telling me how boring this all was, what could we do, etc. I decided to sit on the back porch, watch the rain and read. She sat with me and texted her friends "I'm bored".
We got showers by flash light and candle light and went to bed before 10 PM.
The youngest didn't want to sleep in her room, so she made a bed on the living room couch. She kept saying how she wasn't tired, but she'd had a "not a sleep over" the night before, so we knew she was running on fumes. She fell asleep before 10 PM, on the couch, texting her friends "I'm Bored".
About 10:30, we heard the oldest kid drive up from her job. I got up with flashlight in hand. I'd texted her twice that we were without power, eat before she got home, flashlight on the floor by the door. She'd ignored the text! The power had not gone out at her work.
About ten minutes later, the power came on. We started laundry, dishes, turned off lights and such. Youngest moved back to her bed.

In the middle of the night, it started storming again! This time, the power stayed on and the youngest didn't need to text her friends "I'm SO BORED"

Good thing she wasn't born in 1850.

Driving in to work today and there were several places with trees down across the roads, lights not working and flooded streets.

Bird Poop Bombing practice range

We have two cats. One stays inside and sleeps 23 hours a day. The other likes to hang outside. He likes to bother the other cats up the street, he likes to watch the world go by, he likes to lay in the sun, sleep in the shade of the bushes, roll in the dirt and do other cat stuff.

Every spring, we have anywhere from two to five birds build their nest in our three oak trees. They then have their babies. We have cardinals, mocking birds, sparrows and I don’t know what else building the nest. The birds do NOT like the cat walking about. They like to swoop over his head. We’ve seen him actually pinned to the ground by the birds. I’ve also found a few dead birds. He has enough of it and has killed a few over the years.

One thing the cat likes to do is walk down on our drive way, roll on it to scratch his back or head to the neighbors to check on their dogs. The birds have taken up poop bombing practice while the cat is on the drive way.

One photo is proof.

Rassle'n with a truck

My diesel truck is 10 years old now. It's been relatively trouble free. I do most of the routine maintenance on it. A few weeks back it gave me a no-start day. Part of that day was to disconnect the batteries. Yes, plural, there are two needed to start this diesel. There are two negative cables, that just go from each battery down to the engine block and also to the truck chassis. But the positive cable, is a doosie! It is about 10 feet long. Yes, feet long. It starts at the battery on the drivers side, is then taped along the radiator running to the passenger side battery. Where it has another post connector. From there, it has a smaller wire to the starter solenoid and the main cable runs under the engine to the starter. This is not small cable either. It is about as big around as your thumb. And attached to something every foot. And covered with that plastic wrap to keep from chaffing. At 11 AM this Saturday, I called a local mom and pop battery shop about putting on new connectors. It was NOT advised, as that one connector would be massive, to join the two batteries and also run to the starter. I figure that much, and had priced out a replacement cable. No one had the replacement cable, and it was $100 also. But this guy DID have one and for $65 and he'd throw in two bolts so I could replace those on the negative terminals also! So, I got the cable and it took a bit over an hour to replace it.

Since I had that done and it was only past 2 PM, and I had nothing else to be doing, I went ahead with replacing the transmission fluid and filter. Which I'd not done for about 100,000 miles. The transmission holds 16 quarts in the deep sump, aluminum finned pan. It's held on with about 20 bolts. All that came off, slimy transmission oil in my hair, shirt, arms, etc.
I worked until 7:30 that night, with a dinner break in there. But it all got done.

Sunday, I washed and re-oiled the air filter. I just need to change the oil on the beast before our vacation to south Texas.

The photo is the old cable, with the rotted ends, and missing all the protective stuff that I'd already thrown away.